The Stone Cross Farm Sausage Shop in Taylorsville will be opening the doors this summer. Owners Patrick and Leeta Kennedy are quick to thank the team at KCARD for helping to make this new venture a reality.

“We have developed an amazing working relationship with the team at KCARD through the years, as we have expanded our business,” explained Patrick. “So as we began developing the plan to start processing our own sausage, we once again turned to KCARD.”

Patrick explained that customer demand for Stone Cross Farm’s sausages had increased to the point that the processing facility the Kennedys used to make the product could not keep up with the demand. The couple developed a plan for The Sausage Shop, as a way to address this growth.

Last month, we finished our busiest workshop season yet. While we still have a few targeted trainings coming up (are you on our MarketReady training list for May 18th?), this is a good time to review the workshops we held last year and start thinking about what might be good options for next year.

Creating effective workshops in a variety of topics is no easy task. KCARD talks with a variety of partners throughout the year to plan useful workshops for Kentucky producers and agribusinesses.

Have you liked KCARD on Facebook? We post all our workshops (and those provided by our partners as well) on Facebook and our website, so that is a great way to stay up-to-date on the latest opportunities.

USDA accepting applications for the Local Food Promotion Program and Farmers’ Market Promotion Program Grants

The USDA Local Food Promotion Program (LFPP) and Farmers’ Market Promotion Program (FMPP) grants are designed to provide ways for local farmers to increase sales to consumers and support businesses that aggregate, process, and market locally-produced agricultural products.

This program can be a great help to producers looking to retain more of that food dollar from what they produce on their farm or to investigate new business ideas, but it is not a simple program.

The USDA Value Added Producer grant program is designed to help producers that want to add value to an agricultural commodity. The most popular methods we see are changing the physical state (think milk to cheese, berries to jelly), marketing a commodity locally (premium on local product), and produced in a manner that enhances value (think organic/sustainable).

This program can be a great help to producers looking to retain more of that food dollar from what they produce on their farm or to investigate new business ideas, but it is not a simple program.

The Agribusiness Grant Facilitation Program is specifically designed to help Kentucky farmers and other agribusiness find, apply, & receive funding through grants and other available programs.For updates on funding opportunities available nationally and for Kentucky farmers and agribusiness, sign up for our email list.